Every year, rather than offer a ranked list, I make a playlist of all my favorite songs of the year, best enjoyed by listening straight through from beginning to end. Here are 27 awesome songs (about 2.5 hours) that occupied my ears in 2015.
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Every year, rather than offer a ranked list, I make a playlist of all my favorite songs of the year, best enjoyed by listening straight through from beginning to end. Here are 27 awesome songs (about 2.5 hours) that occupied my ears in 2015.

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Ever-prolific Chihei Hatakeyama has released 3 albums this year, each better than the last. His newest is gorgeous.
I've stopped doing monthly playlists - but I have updated my favorite tracks of the year, if'n yr interested.
Moebius' 45-yr discography can be hard to track. Here's a playlist of everything available on Spotify.
One of many of Cluster's magnificent acheivements. #RIPmoebius

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My favorite songs of the last 5 years, updated/expanded. 141 songs, 12 hours of music.
...and here are my favorite tracks of the year so far. Not ordered - just hit shuffle.
We're halfway through 2015: here's my running playlist of favorite albums of the year so far.
All of 3 months into 2015, here's a rolling playlist of my favorite albumsâupdated monthly.
March Listening
To be honest I kinda stopped listening to new music around the middle of the month because I was just really enjoying how this mix flowed and I didnât want to add anything else to it.
James Place: Sense of an Ending
Dawn of Midi: Nix
Tame Impala: Let It Happen
Fieldhead: Northumblermand
Elvis Perkins: & Eveline
Jonas Munk: Absorb
Mark Rogers & Mary Byrne: Walk with Me
Stray Thoughts:
Best album of the month is Jonas Munkâs Absorb/Fabric/Cascade, three long busy synth ambient tracks that really feel like one very long ride.
Runners up: James Placeâs Living on Superstition and the Loscil/Fieldhead split EP Fury and Hecla. The latter is interesting in that the two artists alternate tracks rather than filling one side of a record each. The whole thing hangs together very well.
Two advance singles bode very well for full-lengths later this yearâTame Impala and Dawn of Midi. Both sound like theyâre capable of topping past work.

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February Listening
A slight tweak to my rulebook for these monthly mixes: they'll be confined to new releases going forward, rather than simply "new to me". The ratio has always been out of whack so why fight it. I have some more timeless mixes in the work for the three of you who will miss that element.
Still true however is that these playlists are not ranked, but ordered, so listening from beginning to end is the ideal. If there's a theme to this month it might be "in a lull"âI really like these tracks but if they have anything in common it is a kind of stasis. Don't fight it.
Nils Frahm: Peter
Unknown Mortal Orchestra: Multi-Love
Mind Over Mirrors: Regular Step on Snake River
Andrew Bird: Rising Water
Steve Gunn & the Black Twig Pickers: Trailways Ramble
Sam Prekop: Weather Vane
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma: The Last Time I Saw Your Face
Stray Thoughts:
Best albums of the month are Sam Prekop's The Republic and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's A Year with 13 Moons. Prekop is really finding his voice as an electronic artist, now that he seems to have left his soft jazz songwriting behind. The Republic is far more fulfilling than his last attempt at this sound, Old Punch Card. Meanwhile Cantu-Ledesma's album is an interesting ambient record made from synths and static and distortion. I hesitate to name drop for fear of creating false expectations but if you are a fan of Tim Hecker or Fennesz then you may find something rewarding here too.
My other favorite album of the month is Jose Gonzalez's new album (not reflected in this mix since I used it in January's mix). It's not terribly different from his old material, but that's fine.
 With Echolocations, Andrew Bird has now released four lengthy excursions or experiments since 2012's Break it Yourself, none of which feel like a proper followup. Echolocations is all instrumental; if you like his Useless Creatures record then you should be all over this.
Last two tracks on Steve Gunn & the Black Twig Pickers' new EP are outstanding. The first half of the record is faithful to a backwoodsy genre but I'd rather listen to music from the 30s then this new creation.
Existential (at LACMA Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
I'm very honored to see that a handful of my contributions made it into "How to Write About Music," coming soon via Bloomsbury. Very flattering to see my name next to so many incredible critics.
KRANK 192: Disappears: Irreal (2015)
Disappears have been on a fairly steady upward trajectory for their first four full-lengths, introducing their aesthetic on the back-to-back releases Lux (KRANK 143) and Guider (KRANK 151), refining it on the excellent Pre Language (KRANK 164), and breaking out of it on the weird and creepy Era (KRANK 182), still their best album to date. Irreal picks up from Era in that Disappears seem to have outgrown the more straightforward rockers of their early releases. It's a testament to the band's steady evolution: Irreal sounds like quintessential Disappears, and yet some of the most definitive elements of their early albums (i.e. riffs) are all but absent. Where past albums punched quick with succinct physicality, Irreal is more of a psychological terror.Â
Credit a stabilized lineup for that progression. Disappears went through three drummers and two producers on their first four albums, but all the players from Era remain in place this time around. Drummer Noah Ledger (their third) in particular has found his legs with the band, showing that of all their past drummers (including Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley), Ledger is the bet fit for the group. Whereas Shelley and original drummer Graeme Gibson played crisp and tight, Ledger plays big, with a towering menace. He and bassist Damon Carruesco are the core of every track on Irreal.
Guitarist and frontman Brian Case seems happy to let that be so. As on many of the tracks on Era, Case forgoes the Wooden Shjips-like riffing that defined the band's early material in favor of howling feedback, skeletal harmonics, and swells of atmospheric noise. Vocally Case continues to move away from his old tough-dog barks toward a kind of carnival creep, guiding you through Irreal's hall of mirrors. And the structure of these songs fits right into that hall--they twist, contort, reflect. They almost never follow the traditional verse/chorus dichotomy that defined many past Disappears tracks.
So Irreal is a more singular, monolithic force than past Disappears records--that's both its strength and its weakness. Right around the water-treading instrumental "OUD" Irreal starts to lose momentum. The latter songs never really regain the compelling, ominous cloud that hangs over the first half of the album, and strange post-punk/pop of Era highlights like "Weird House" or "Ultra" are missed. Still, for a band who has been treading the line between repetition and redundancy from the very start, Disappears, perhaps shockingly, remains surprising and forward-looking. Irreal shows that the well is far from tapped.
The nice thing about having no pretensions toward professionalism is I can just revise my end-of-year list whenever I want. It neednât be preserved in amber. So in the two months since I originally posted my favorite tracks of 2014, I heard a lot more music and five more songs deserved a place on my list. So Iâve revised my list. By now Iâm more or less done putting concerted effort into hearing 2014 albums, so itâs probably safe to say the book is now closed on this mix. Â
The mix is not ranked, but it is ordered. I tried to do something that has an arc to it, so I hope youâll set aside the time to listen. (The additions, for the record, are Stanley Brinks, Amen Dunes, Steve Gunn, Blake Mills, and Eno/Hyde.)
Steve Moore: Logotone
Spoon: Rent I Pay
The New Pornographers: War on the East Coast
Temples: Shelter Song
Ryan Teague: Remote Outliers
White Rainbow: Killswitch
Actress: Rule
Angel Olsen: Unfucktheworld
Stanley Brinks and The Wave: Orange Juice
The New Mendicants: Sarasota
The War on Drugs: Red Eye
Hospitality: Last Words
Amen Dunes: Sixteen
Marissa Nadler: Firecrakers
Rebekka Karijord: Madrigal
A Winged Victory for the Sullen: Atomos VII
Sharon Van Etten: Your Love is Killing Me
Porya Hatami: After the Rain
Majical Cloudz: Your Eyes
Future Islands: Seasons (Waiting on You)
Wye Oak: Before
Fennesz: BĂŠcs
Koen Holtkamp: Between Visible Things
Steve Gunn: Tommyâs Cargo
Beck: Waking Light
Blake Mills: Donât Tell Our Friends About Me
Woods: Moving to the Left
The Growlers: Big Toe
Hamilton Leithauser: I Retired
Karen Gwyer: You Big
Eno / Hyde: Lilac
Hundred Waters: Murmurs
Orcas: SelaÂ

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January Listening
The first part of the month was spent catching up with things I missed in 2014 (much like December was too). Then in mid-January the rush of the new kicked up. And wow, there's a lot of great stuff in 2015 already.
As usual, this mix is ordered for an ideal beginning-to-end experience. I like the ebb and flow of this one.
Jose Gonzalez: Leaf Off / The Cave (2015)
Aphex Twin: diskhat ALL prepared1mixed 13 (from Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2, 2015)
Alessandro Cortini: Passatempo (from Sonno, 2014)
Panda Bear: Boys Latin (from Panda Bear vs the Grim Reaper, 2015)
Amen Dunes: Sixteen (from Love, 2014)
Disappears: Integration (from Irreal, 2015)
Marvin Ayres: Variation 3 (from Ultradian Rhythms, 2014)
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: Sundry (from Euclid, 2015)
Eno*Hyde: Lilac (from High Life, 2014)
Stray Thoughts:
Amen Dunes' Love wins the prize for Best Album from Last Year I Heard This Year (there's at least one every year, right?). I played that nonstop for much of the month.
I like the new Aphex Twin release more than Syro, for whatever that's worth.
I have the same reaction to every Panda Bear album: there are two or three total knockout tracks, and a bunch of songs I could readily do without. Grim Reaper starts strong but doesn't keep it up. Love this and a few others, though. And PS Cooper is all over this track.
Very excited to hear the new Jose Gonzalez album. His recent detour with Junip in the last few years is very underrated.
Never heard of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith until a couple of weeks ago but Euclid and last year's Tides are both very good, very unique records. They're not perfectâand I haven't quite landed on why I feel that wayâbut they are distinct. I'm eager to follow her and see how her music develops.
Sprinkling rain, blue dusk #LosAngeles, January 26, 5:33pm #geometry #light #dusk #lookup #minimal